Exhibit features artist who painted Boulder's peaks

"The Coming Storm," by Charles Partridge Adams, hangs above the fireplace at the Carnegie Branch Library for Local History.
(Cliff Grassmick/Daily Camera)

In 1906, Paul Raymond's bookstore in downtown Boulder had a showing of landscape paintings by Charles Partridge Adams. The exhibit opened to the public with a talk by the artist, the Daily Camera reported. His works were priced from $5, for small watercolors, to $500, for large oils on canvas.

More than 100 years later, the Denver Art Museum is celebrating the artist with an exhibition titled, "Rocky Mountain Majesty: The Paintings of Charles Partridge Adams."

The showing, which opens Dec. 16, is the first time Adams' masterworks will be displayed at a major art museum, according to DAM officials. The exhibit will be up through Sept.8, 2013, and will showcase 37 examples of Adams' finest art.

Born in 1858, Adams moved to Denver from Massachusetts at age 18. He took a three-month camping trip in the Rocky Mountains with another young artist, which resulted in many sketches and paintings. His landscapes were first exhibited publicly in Denver in 1886.

In 1900, the artist began renting a space to work in Estes Park during the summers. He built a studio there in 1905 that he often referred to as "The Sketch Box."

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Adams painted many of the peaks in Colorado, including Longs Peak and the jagged ridges of the San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado, earning a reputation for scenes with dramatic stormy skies and brilliant sunlight. He produced many paintings of Boulder's Arapaho peaks, some painted at Camp Albion. (Camp Albion was a small mining center in western Boulder County, according to records of the Carnegie Branch Library.) One of those watercolors, loaned by a private art dealer, will be featured in the Denver Art Museum show. The Denver Public Library owns an undated Adams watercolor, "Autumn snow in the Arapahoe Peaks, Colorado, from near timberline."

In 1916, some of Adams' paintings of the Arapaho peaks were included in a show of artists to open the new gallery at the Joslin Dry Goods Co. in Denver, according to the 1993 book, "The Art of Charles Partridge Adams," by Dorothy Dines, Stephen J. Leonard and Stanley L. Cuba.

In 1919, the University of Colorado awarded Adams a gold medal for his honorable service to the state of Colorado.

CU received a gift in 1906 from the Class of 1904 of a Charles Partridge Adams watercolor. A story in the Daily Camera described the painting as a scene of the Sierra Blanca peaks with rays of the setting sun, as viewed from the San Luis Valley.

A 1926 Daily Camera story describes a large oil painting of "Arapahoe Canon" by Adams owned by the university. Neither the CU Heritage Center nor the CU Art Museum has a record of either of these pieces among their current collections.

However, CU is loaning another large oil on canvas, 40x60 inches, by Adams to the DAM show. "Sunrise on the Mountains at the Head Of Moraine Park, Near Estes Park, Colorado, c. 1920s" will be on display at the museum. The painting was a gift to the university from Adams' three sons in 1944. CU also owns two smaller pieces by Adams that were gifts of Lorine Pickett, according to Maggie Mazzullo, collections manager at the CU Art Museum.

Before the Adams show opens, you can stop by the Carnegie Branch Library for Local History and view a large Adams oil, "The Coming Storm." The artwork was a gift from the Woman's Club of Boulder in 1907 to celebrate the opening of the Boulder Public Library.

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